iphoto- they keep the originals?

I've recently discovered that my iphoto hasn't been discarding deleted photos! After I modify and improve them, I'm still finding that the originals are on my hard drive. This has been going on for about a year now, so as you might expect this is a big job at hand. Is there any option in iphoto to delete the originals once you modify them? Can I just delete my originals folder? Is there a utility to do this?

-B

it's a non-destructive editing program.

Ok, it's non destructive. Doesn't really answer the question for a newbie(me), once your finished editing, do you save the finished product to a new folder and delete the old one?

bjratchf said:

I've recently discovered that my iphoto hasn't been discarding deleted photos! After I modify and improve them, I'm still finding that the originals are on my hard drive. This has been going on for about a year now, so as you might expect this is a big job at hand. Is there any option in iphoto to delete the originals once you modify them? Can I just delete my originals folder? Is there a utility to do this?

-B

Click to expand...

You don't need a utility - you just need to delete trash from within iPhoto!

I always thought iPhoto stores the originals so you don't loose them and then it stores your modifications so that you can use iPhoto to export/save a new photo along with the changes, hence non-destructive ... there shouldn't be duplicate photos though, or are there?

iPhoto keeps a copy of all your original files so that you can use the "Revert to Original" option at any time. It keeps originals for even the most minuscule changes, such as changing the orientation. If you change orientation often, then you've got a whole bunch of "duplicates" in your iPhoto Library. Also, if you've changed a file in another way and have absolutely no desire to go back to the original, you've got another duplicate there. So it builds up quite a bit over time.

My iPhoto library was somewhere around a bulging 90GB before I followed a few tricks to cut it down in size. I haven't gotten around to getting rid of duplicates but I still managed to get it down to 72GB. I only have 18,873 pictures, so I know that I should be able to cut it down quite a bit more when I get rid of duplicates.

There was a utility that helped get rid of duplicates, it's called iPhoto Diet. Unfortunately, it hasn't been updated lately and only supports iPhoto 6 or 7.